


c'est la vie

by sleeplustre



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Office, F/M, Female Protagonist, Gen, POV Second Person, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-09-25 10:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9814760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeplustre/pseuds/sleeplustre
Summary: There's something mysterious about your coworker. Despite having shared a cubicle for three years, you still can't quite put your finger on it. Hopefully your investigations will also help confirm whether or not this is the same guy you had a one night stand with two weeks ago.-----------------------------------could be considered a parody of those player-insert ficsalso office au bc i've noticed the distinct lack of such fics in the off archive haha





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Man I've been meaning to publish this for quite a while now, but I'd just found it in the bowels of my google drive (I never name any of my documents lol) so here you go! ^^ Be warned that this was written mainly for fun, so don't take it too seriously haha
> 
> A few notes before we begin:  
> \- the batter will be referred to as "Nicholas Ashley" in this AU stemming from "Nicholas" tunic + "Ashley" bat but other characters will sometimes call him "the batter" as a nickname  
> \- I don't know much about generic office jobs so most of my information is from google ^^;; please feel free to point out any inconsistencies! I would greatly appreciate it
> 
> With that said, please enjoy!

You wake up with the worst hangover of your life.

Every hangover has been the worst hangover of your life, but this one is especially horrible. Your head feels like an eight pound bowling ball, and your throat burns like a bitch. But that was just the typical hangover routine.

What made this the worst one yet is the fact that you’ve woken up in an unfamiliar room, in an unfamiliar bed. With an unfamiliar body in the sheets beside you. 

What the fuck? You sloppily comb a hand through your sweaty bangs. You can’t even remember where you went with your friends last night. When did you even start drinking? Everything past 10 PM yesterday is a complete blank.

Sudden panic surges through your system, kickstarting your good senses immediately. What the fuck. You may be a social drinker with free-spirited friends, but you’ve only ever been that smashed twice in your life. Neither of those incidents had ever ended with a one-night stand, but like  _ hell  _ you were going to wait for this guy to come around and start proposing. 

With the lightning reflexes and stealth you’d gained from the hours spent on fps video games in your youth, you fight through the fatigue encasing your sore limbs and slip out from beneath the sheets with little disturbance as possible. 

The initial contact between your bare foot and the frigidity of the wooden floor forces a small hiss through your clenched teeth. You clamp a hand across your mouth and glance back anxiously. To your relief, the lump in the sheets stays unmoving. Man, this guy must’ve been  _ really _ wasted last night.

You collect your clothes (haphazardly strewn across the floor) and begin to brusquely stuff your phone, wallet, and keys back into your bag (Kate Spade, because you’re a classy yet fashion-forward girl, but not basic enough for Michael Kors) when a muffled groan sounds out from behind you. Your pace quickens tenfold, and both jacket and jeans are on in a flash. As you approach the flimsy-looking door with its chipped white paint and brass chain lock, your hand pauses above the handle. 

Guilt creeps up your throat, as the knowledge that this guy was just as hungover as you, if not more, forces you to turn and and rifle through your bag for an extra aspirin. 

You leave it on the nightstand with a half glass of water before hastily shutting the door.

The memory of these events quickly slip from your mind as you look forward to a hot shower at home. Besides, it’s not like you were ever going to see this guy again...right?


	2. 1

You’ve worked at Von Gacey Inc. for 3 years now. 

It’s a decent-paying job, if not infuriatingly mundane.

You really can’t complain though. Your boss, a tall, gorgeous, woman whose face you still can’t bring yourself to look at, picked your jobless-fresh-undergrad behind up from the asphalt and gave you employment enough to both pay off your 4 month late apartment rent and secure a standard 3 meals daily. 

You’ve been indebted to her ever since, and having quickly adjusted to the workplace, even earning a recent promotion to senior logistics coordinator.

Inventory control, data entry, taking phone calls---it’s probably the position with the most varied tasks you’ve ever taken. However, you pride yourself on the multi-tasking skills you picked up during your college years juggling between your three part time jobs, schoolwork, video games, and trying to pay off rent. 

It really isn’t so bad, you think as you stretch out your back with a satisfying ‘pop.’ It’s Friday afternoon and you’re just about done with your paperwork. The rest of the office seems to have increased in volume as well, coworkers popping heads over cubicles to discuss dinner plans or simply idle chatter about the events of the day. 

A loud ‘thump’ startles you from your thoughts, and you glance over towards the source of the noise.

Ah, that guy. 

He fumbles with the stapler he just dropped, clumsily attempting to pick the scattered staples off of the carpet tiles. You wince a little. Sometimes, it’s like this guy temporarily loses his motor functions. A dangerous thing, considering you share a cubicle with him.

Or maybe not, considering the fact that you might be the  _ only  _ one capable of sharing a cubicle with him. Your well-honed reflexes and insane luck seem to neutralize the effects of his accident-prone awkwardness. Besides, your boss, Ms. Eloha, assigned you as his senior upon his entry into the workplace. 

Nicholas Ashley is his name, but most of your coworkers have taken to calling him “the batter.” The source of the nickname and his past was something...to be discussed in furtive whispers between coffee breaks. From what you’ve caught wind of, he used to be an up-and-coming professional baseball player of sorts. He was kicked off the team for violence against another teammate or something equally disturbing, as the rumours say. You can’t say it’s made you too wary of the guy, though it doesn’t help that your cubicle partner was a bit on the stoic side. 

It was rather endearing though, that he’d initially taken to following you around like a baby duckling as you showed him the ins-and-outs of the workplace (and when to get to the coffee machine right as the creamer gets freshly restocked.) It’s rather difficult to believe that the same guy who became starry-eyed after being shown how to fold an origami bird out of leftover post-its was capable of beating someone over the head with a baseball bat.

“Got any plans for tonight,  _ darling? _ ”

A smug voice breaks through the background noise of the surrounding cubicles and shakes you from your reverie. You let out a snort before playfully chucking a wadded ball of paper towards the speaker. 

Zacharie breaks out in good-natured laughter as the projectile bounces off the side of his head. 

“Ah, you wound me! And here I thought we would go out to dinner together~”

“Tch, with your ugly mug staring at me across the table? Think I’d lose my appetite first.”

You smirk back jokingly as he redoubles his one-man comedy act. Exchanges like these were frequent between the two of you, considering the fact that you first became friends in university. It had been a jovial reunion in the first week of your employment at Von Gacey, and he now frequents visits by your cubicle despite his own being two floors up in the PR Department. 

“Hmm...guess I’ll come with if Sucre is going too.”

“Ahaha, excellent! We’ll meet you in the lobby after you get cleaned up here, then.”

The dark-haired man nods towards the other occupant of your cubicle, who is still preoccupied with picking staples out of the carpet. 

You grimace and stand up from your rolling chair, smoothing out your skirt. 

You felt kind of bad, making plans right in front of Nicholas like that. You technically were his only friend of sorts in this place, or at least, the only person who ever willingly initiated contact with him beyond the bare minimum. It wasn’t that you were ruling out his social life outside of work, but if the rumours circulating about were anything to go by, it didn’t seem like he had many friends in general. 

“Hey Nick, you wanna come with us?”

The words leave your mouth before it even registers in your mind. Both Zacharie and your cubicle partner look towards you in surprise.

“Well, if you’re free, that is,” you add hastily, feeling a little stupid. 

To your relief, the batter gives you a small nod. It might not have been noticeable to anyone else, but you could clearly read the appreciation in his eyes. 

“That’s fine by me!” Zacharie pipes up from behind you. “Besides, your Honda has four seats, right?”

“Yeah, that’s r--wait a minute,”

That sly bastard was planning to volunteer your car again. You just finished off the last of the down payment this month! There better not be a single stain on your pleather seats after today, or there would be hell to pay.

Before you can speak your mind, however, a timid-looking secretary approaches the three of you. 

“M-Mr. Ashley?”

The batter looks up from where he’s crouched on the floor, empty stapler in hand. You and Zacharie exchange a questioning look. 

“Ms. Eloha r-requests your presence in her office.”

Nicholas’ previous expression of gratitude is quickly replaced by his usually neutral face. He rises up from the carpet tile to an impressive head and a half above both you and Zacharie (two heads in the secretary’s case) and deposits the stapler onto the desk before shuffling out of the cubicle.

To your surprise, he turns towards you and speaks.

“Sorry I can’t come with you. Maybe next time.”

It’s one of the few times you’ve ever heard him speak. His voice is soft with a thick accent. French? You feel a pang of regret for not having kept up with the language back in class during high school. No wonder why he never spoke much. English must not have been his first language.

“Ah yeah, that’s ok. Next time then.” 

Jeez, everything with this guy was so awkward. Maybe it was for the better that he couldn’t come with you and Zacharie. He wasn’t quite familiar with them anyway, and it might’ve been even more painful had he actually joined you guys.

“What was that about,” Zacharie mutters dryly as the two of you head down to meet Sucre in the first-floor lobby, and you don’t even know how to respond because  _ what the hell, you’d like an answer to that too.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i tried hard to keep the characters ic as i could ^^;;  
> please drop a review if you'd like!


	3. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> H-HEY GUYS....so..uh wow there's been overwhelming support for the continuation of this fic ;;; a LOT more than I expected seeing as I kinda started this just for fun ^^;; but you guys are honestly so kind I feel bad about not picking it up for all this time...
> 
> this chapter was REALLY short sorry, but I'm going to try and see if i can pick up where I left off (even though its been waayy too long lmao)
> 
> than you all so so much for sticking with this and refusing to let me give up on it! TT (as for CWD readers I promise to try and update that one before college starts soon too!)

The restaurant fills with ambient noise from clinking of silverware and muted laughter around the three of you. 

“Man, you gotta feel a  _ little  _ bad for the guy, getting caught by Vader Eloha on the way out on a Friday night,” you mention casually to Zacharie around a mouthful of calamari and tartar sauce. Your friend makes a face at the stray bits of squid that spray him across the face, much to Sucre’s amusement. 

“Hmm, I guess so. But it seems that our batter boy is on rather good terms with the boss,no?” 

Your eyebrows shoot up. 

“Really?”

Zacharie shrugs half-heartedly as he twirls a forkful of fettucine alfredo. 

“I dunno. From what I’ve seen, she never seems to be in a bad mood after he walks out of her office…”

Such a thought is quickly whisked away in the same fashion the waitress takes the used plates from your table.

Sucre brings up her recent promotion and the three of you celebrate with some dessert and fruity drinks (you pass the offer, as it was your car that was sitting outside in the Applebee’s parking lot.) 

However, the thought drifts slowly back across the edges of your mind as you gently brake to a stop at a traffic light, the drunken murmurs of your companions in the backseat mingling with the faint bedroom pop emanating from the radio with its glowing numbers.

What exactly was Nicholas’ relation to your boss? He  _ was  _ frequently called into her office, yet he’d never mentioned anything about being in trouble or a promotion or anything of the sort. She always smiled warmly when she passed by their cubicle. It couldn’t have been nepotism surely…?

You shake the thoughts from your head. What was the point in wondering about all this when it had nothing to do with you? 

The light blinks green and you slam down on the accelerator. 

.

.

.

Somewhere, in a dark apartment, Nicholas Ashley jerks awake with a spasm in his foot. The motion nearly wrenches him from his mattress, the breath from his lungs. 

“.... _ cela se produit encore… _ ”(1)

He frowns a little, but ultimately shrugs it off before laying back down. He has work tomorrow.


End file.
